1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mounting structure of a vehicle bumper secured to the lower end of either a trunk lid or a back door.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A typical vehicle bumber mounting structure of the prior art uses one or more bumper stays secured to a rear bumper, and the rear bumper is mounted to the surface of the lower end of a rear panel by fixing the bumper stays to a rear side member of the vehicle. Whereby a large part of the load at the time of collision at the rear bumper is directly transmitted to the vehicle body.
With the aforesaid bumper mounting structure of the prior art, however, it is necessary to provide a desired spacing between the rear bumper and the lower end of the trunk lid or the back door for facilitating the easy opening and closing of the trunk lid or the back door, and the work for providing such spacing is combersome. Besides, in order to secure the rear bumper at a desired position of the rear panel, the position of a luggage floor panel of a luggage room becomes comparatively high, and hence, the space of the luggage room becomes small, resulting in a shortcoming of inability of placing a large luggage therein. Another drawback is in that the comparatively high position of the luggage floor panel and the presence of the rear bumper projecting from the rear panel tend to make it cumbersome to load and unload luggages to and from the luggage room following the opening and closing of the trunk lid or the back door. Especially, in the case of a rear bumper of shock absorbing type, the degree of projection from the rear panel is large and the loading and unloading of the luggage is still more cumbersome.
To avoid the aforesaid inconvenience, a modified bumper mounting structure has been proposed, wherein a rear bumper is mounted to outer side surfaces at the lower end of the trunk lid or the back door, so that impact at the time of collision is transmitted to the vehicle body through the trunk lid or the back door. With this modified bumper mounting structure, the rear bumper is mounted to the trunk lid or the back door, so that when the trunk lid or the back door is opened for loading or unloading the luggage, the rear bumper does not hamper the operation, and the position of the luggage floor panel of the luggage room can be selected low by considering the position of the lower end of the trunk lid or the back door, for allowing the formation of a comparative large space of the luggage room.
With the aforesaid modified bumper mounting structure, however, the rear bumper is mounted to the outer surface of the lower end of the trunk lid or the back door and the collision impact at the time of collision to the rear bumper is transmitted to the vehicle body through the trunk lid or the back door, so that it is necessary to somehow reinforce the trunk lid or the back door for preventing the breakage of the trunk lid or the back door itself. Another difficulty with this modified bumper mounting structure is in that the collision impact is also applied to the hinge of the trunk lid or the back door and may damage the hinge structure, so that it may become necessary to renew the entire assembly of the trunk lid or the back door because simple reparing of the trunk lid or the back door alone may become inadequate under such conditions.
The present invention has been accomplished in view of the aforesaid difficulties of the prior art. An object of the present invention is to provide an improved vehicle bumper mounting structure which ensures a large luggage room space allowing easy loading and unloading of luggages relative to the luggage room without being disturbed by the presence of a rear bumper and minimizes the effect of the rear bumper by transmitting the impact at a collision directly to a vehicle body without passing through a trunk lid or a back door.